


Keep Playing Your Beautiful Song

by IronPunk



Category: The Lone Ranger (2013)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Gender or Sex Swap, Self-Acceptance, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-09
Updated: 2015-04-09
Packaged: 2018-03-22 00:55:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3709087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IronPunk/pseuds/IronPunk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan is a woman and Robert is her husband; the man John is still in love with.</p><p>Or the John Reid character study no one asked for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keep Playing Your Beautiful Song

**Author's Note:**

> This was a character study based off on an idea that popped into my head after I saw the movie a few times. 
> 
> Not meant to be historically accurate in terms of women being able to be sheriff etc etc.

John knows he should be relieved to see his sister standing above him after his long train ride and flawed attempt to stop the train. He’s not.

He hasn’t told Dan that this will be his last trip home. She would understand, but he doesn’t want to answer her questions about it. She knew he wanted to be here, to be home, more than anything else and she be suspicious if he announced his intent.

He sees Robert for the first time in eight years. It’s right after he’s locked up the Indian and he’s covered in dust, scrapes and blood. He wants to think he looks rugged but he knows he just looks like a kid who ran out to play in the dirt.

Robert gets a cloth and some water and hands it to John. John blindly swipes at his own face, hoping he is at least marginally successful at cleaning his wounds.

He’s obviously failing because Robert reaches out and grabs the rag out of John’s hands. John flinches away from Robert, but is spared by his sister coming in.

“D’you have a place to stay, John?” she asks.

“Not yet. I’ll find somewhere,” he says. I’ll find somewhere. It hurts because he won’t. He’s going to leave and not come back and he’ll end up in a place but it won’t really matter. He won’t get to be himself so it doesn’t matter.

Robert frowns at him. “You should stay with us. We’ve got enough room.”

“No thank you,” John replies.

Robert thinks that John doesn’t like him because he’s married John’s sister and John lets him.

~~~

John really really does not want his sister out chasing criminals, but he learned a long time ago that Dan doesn’t need or want  his protection. Not that he’d be any good at it, but it was his duty to protect his sister after their parents died.

When the bullets start flying he’s grateful that she knows what she’s doing because she guides him through the chaos of the ambush until the bullets rip through her.

“You shouldn’t have come back, John,” she tells him. And it hurts because he shouldn’t have come back. He has nothing to come back for.

“Take care of him for me,” she tells him and he prays to a God he doesn’t believe in that she doesn’t know how he feels about her husband.

He tries to get her away from this, but he fails at that too. Cavindish eats his sister’s heart while John lies there and watches.

John looks at his sister’s lifeless body and feels more helpless and alone than he’s ever felt. He wonders how he’s going to tell Robert and his heart aches worse than he thought possible.

He doesn’t have time to dwell on it because suddenly he’s dead too.

Except. He’s not.

The Indian he put in jail might have saved his life and John thanks him by pulling his gun on him. He’s not one for violence but he needs answers.

He finds out that the Indian did save him, but only because John was some sort of spirit walker. The Indian wanted to save Dan. He should have saved Dan. Dan was a great warrior and she could have gone back to Robert and kept him safe.

He wants to go back to town, get someone else who was brave and could actually fight. Someone who wasn’t a failure.

John doesn’t have anyone waiting for him and he’s not much of a fighter, but he agrees to help catch Cavindish to find justice for his sister. And for Robert.

Their first stop is at Red’s and John is uncomfortable for many different reasons. Some of it is the obvious objectification of a gender he’s supposed to be interested in but isn’t, but most of it is his fear of being unable to deal with things if they go bad.

“We’re looking for a man,” John says.

“I bet.”

John tries not to flinch. There’s no way this man could know.

Red’s is full of debauchery and women of… ill repute. John is out of place, again, but he would have been out of his depth even without his predilection for his own gender.

He can’t help the feeling of dread he gets when he finds out that his sister was here arguing with someone. Then he touches the rock and sees terrible things. Warped visions of things that had happened and things he hopes never see the light of day.

Things go bad again after that. Of course they do. Luckily Tonto’s skills and good timing come together and get them out in one piece. But…

They come back to fire.

Robert is missing, a man is dead, and they are in the middle of yet another violent situation that he is not prepared for.

They make it out again and John finds himself starting to believe Tonto’s ramblings about spirit walkers. Or maybe he’s starting to believe in Tonto.

It scares him a little to depend on someone like this so he acts out. He feels a little ashamed of himself when they start arguing about Robert and which way to go.

He feels worse when they get captured and he finds out what happened to Tonto when he was young.

The worse he feels the more he acts out and he ends up arguing with Tonto over Cavindish again.

~~~

Tonto was right. He was right about justice and the evil in men.

John was terrible to Tonto because of his belief that what he was doing was right, but he was wrong. Tonto saved him anyway.

John couldn’t tell if it was because of the spirit walker thing or something else, but John finally stopped fighting him.

“You were right. There is no justice,” John tells Tonto.  “Cole controls everything. The railroad. The Calvery. Everything.If men like him represent the law. I’d rather be an outlaw.”

So many people dead because of silver. John couldn’t believe what had been done over the mineral. Couldn’t believe his own sister was murdered over it it.

“That is why you wear the mask,” Tonto tells him. They are quite for a while. Quietly watching the horse get down from the tree.

“Your people shouldn’t…” John starts. “It’s not right.”

Tonto tenses next to him, but doesn’t say anything. Not for a while.

“Neither should yours,” he says softly some time later.

John’s gut clenches. It’s the first time anyone has ever known about him. He’s just glad that it’s Tonto.

~~~

The next time he sees Robert they are in the middle of another disaster. They planned it this time, but it doesn’t make it any less of a mess.

There’s a train chase that neither one of them should have lived through, but they do. They expose Cole’s plans, kill him, and save Robert but it doesn’t bring back his sister.

He hopes she would have been proud of him. 


End file.
